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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

I am reading this transcript of Bill Moyer's interview with Salman Rushdie on the "Faith and Reason" series.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/print/faithandreason101_print.html

The whole series of interviews, with various notables, seems to be available in transcript form, as well as streaming video.

As I read the transcript, I am shocked by the frequency with which Salm Rushdie says "you know." Perhaps he is nervous on camera.

I realize that Rushdie may not be the average Muslim's favorite novelist, but these shows air on national educational television, so it behoves Muslims to be aware of what is said.

Some excerpts:

Rushdie:

We as human beings look for transcendence, you know? I think we're not satisfied with the every day. Because we are dreamers, because we are an imagining creature, we do have the ability to imagine a world which is not simply the flesh and blood world that we inhabit. And that has great, in many great ways, found its manifestation in the world's religions. And as I say, art came out of that. And then at a certain point, literature, music, painting separated itself from its sacred roots and became, if you like, secularized. And out of that comes the art of the novel. But I think one has to remember its roots in mythology, its roots in religion.

What we are facing in the world right now is a new tyranny, using the language of religion, using the language of Islam, but which is in fact totalitarianism. Which you can compare to Nazism, you can compare to Stalinism. And which operates against its own people as well as the rest of the world in very fascistic and oppressive ways. And this is I think important to know that people most oppressed by this radical Islamism are Muslims. The people suffering most from the Taliban were Afghans. So this fascistic project, political project, wearing the language of religion like a cloak, like a protective cloak, needs to be called by its true name. And that's really what this manifesto existed to say.

The degree of censorship in the Muslim world is so rigorous at the moment that the very few scholars are able to go back to first principles and reexamine the basis of the faith. Islam is unusual in that it's the only one of the great world religions which was born inside recorded history. That there's an enormous amount of factual historical record about the life of a prophet and about social conditions in Arabia at that time. So it's possible to look at the origin of Islam in a scholarly way, based on historical fact.

BILL MOYERS: From my notebook of Rushdie wisdom, quote, "Human beings understand themselves and shape their futures by arguing and challenging and questioning and saying the un-sayable, not by bowing the knee whether to gods or to men." Isn't that exactly what religious extremists do not want to hear?

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